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Bombay high court

10 May 2014

Bombay HC: Hot turf Bombay high court Justice Roshan Dalvi has been accused of corruption by producer Sanjay Punamiya in a nine-page complaint, alleging that her husband Shamim Dalvi told his lawyer in March that for Rs 25 lakh he could get his wife to pass a favourable order in the case before her

07 May 2014

The Bombay high court has declined granting interim relief to movie director and producer Anurag Kashyap over a challenge of the government's rule to superimpose a "smoking is injurious to health" warning on movies whenever a cigarette is shown on screen.

The Censor Board had not given one of Kashyap's movie a certificate after he refused to include the warning in his movie Ugly. However, Chief Justice Mohit Shah and Justice MS Sanklecha said it would not grant interim relief and said he'd have to petition the central government to change the rule. [PTI]

Naik Naik & Co represented Kashyap, according to the Bombay high court's causelist of today.

16 April 2014

The National Stock Exchange (NSE) has alleged that Hyderabad-based firm Manshi Systems has been selling customers access to a subscription-only NSE service. The stock exchange has now started proceedings in the Bombay high court against the firm and, significantly, also against the Indian subsidiary of the firm's web hosting company GoDaddy, which is the world's largest domain name registrar.

The NSE is represented by Krishna and Saurastri Associates partner Manish Saurastri. Cyber lawyer Pavan Duggal told Mint that under the IT Act, intermediaries, such as GoDaddy, would have to prove in court that they had exercised due diligence against copyright infringement.

The story did not specify whether GoDaddy, which apparently manages 57m domain names, received and ignored any takedown requests from the NSE before the court case, or whether it otherwise failed to be diligent in spotting the allegedly infringing service. [Mint]

13 March 2014

kynumsnxThe Talwars, who are in jail after a special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court last year found them guilty of murdering their daughter, have won permission to watch a movie allegedly about them.

07 March 2014

Bombay HC called up on unpaid Feb salaries: The Bombay high court chief secretary and registrar have been issued notices by the Goa State Human Rights Commission over non-payment of February salaries of all court staff of around 150 at the Bombay high court bench at Goa. The complaint on which the court was acting was filed by advocate Aires Rodrigues [TOI]

Kerala BC calls for boycott over earlier boycott fallout: Responding to the Bar Council of Kerala’s boycott call, lawyers in Kerala abandoned the courts to protest the alleged assault of an advocate and his physically disabled brother by the Railway Protection Force at Thiruvananthpuram. At the time of the incident, the advocates were reportedly protesting against the arrest of their colleagues for allegedly entering the Central Railway Station without a platform ticket or railway ticket [Zee News]

Allahabad lawyers agitate on HC road for colleague accident compensation: Hundreds of Allahabad high court lawyers blocked the road near the high court, for a few hours, over Wednesday’s road mishap that led to the death of their colleague. They pledged to continue with their agitation until their demand for compensation were fulfilled [TOI]

Delhi advocate MS Khan threatened by Godfather: “Delhi-based lawyer MS Khan has alleged he received threat calls and SMSes from underworld don Ravi Pujari that he and his family would be harmed if he does not disengage himself from pursuing various terror cases,” reported the [PTI]

Justice Nanavati’s son rapped for threatening opposing lawyer in open court: Retired Supreme Court justice GT Nanavati’s son and advocate Dhaval Nanavati was rapped by the Gujarat high court for threatening an opposing lawyer during court proceedings. Reportedly he told counsel, Megha Chitalia, that he would get her thrown out of the panel of assistant government pleaders. In open court the bench then questioned the basis on which he was issuing such a threat to his opponent. [TOI]

06 March 2014

Bombay HC mandates cinemas to offer free online booking: Bombay HC asked the state government to issue a circular asking all movie theatres and multiplexes to set up their own websites for online booking of movie tickets without a convenience charge. A government resolution had already asked all theatres and multiplexes to do so, but they had outsourced it to websites like BookMyShow, which charge a convenience charge [PTI]

Lawyers soon to apply for ‘jailed interviews’ online: Delhi HC yesterday asked the city government to provide an online application facility for lawyers to get approval from jail authorities to interview their jailed clients. The court was hearing advocate Amit Sahni’s petition against the prison Director General’s 27 February order that restricted legal interviews with inmates to once in a week [PTI]

NUJS sexual harassment guidelines for interns ready: NUJS Kolkata’s draft guidelines on protection of interns from sexual harassment is reportedly ready and awaiting the nod of its executive council to finally come into force. The guidelines allow the submission of oral or written complaints by interns to the law school’s internal complaints committee, which will get 60 days to submit its report on the complaint [Indian Express]

Patna HC sacks 4th corrupt court officer: Patna HC in a full court meeting ordered compulsory retirement of a judicial officer against whom an allegation of taking a Rs 5 lakh bribe had been confirmed in an inquiry. The officer was originally to retire in 2019. This is the fourth case of stern action by the HC against its judicial officers this year. Earlier this year, Ajay Srivastava of Jehanabad was forcibly retired. Then three judicial officers were sacked for involvement in a sex scandal, and only a few days ago the SDJM of Sherghati in Gaya district, Ram Sajan was suspended for allegedly seeking sexual favours [TOI]

Delhi HC worried by shortage of public prosecutors: Delhi HC pulled up Delhi government over shortage of public prosecutors and non payment of fees to existing government lawyers, despite the large scale creation of new court buildings. The court was reportedly “surprised” that the government listed many restrictive conditions in its advertisements for public prosecutor posts, resulting in receiving very few applications [TOI]

Safety of IT women PIL: Asks for a law to regulate the safety of women working in the software and IT industries, filed by advocate KTS Sivakumar. Sivakumar asked for regulation of women employees’ working hours and “foolproof” security measures for those women who work night shifts [PTI]

03 March 2014

Bombay high court comes six judges close to its full strength today with justices Anil Menon, Chandrakant Bhadang, Vishwas Jadhav, Ananta Badar, Pukhraj Bora and Anuja Prabhudesai taking oath today to take its strength to 66, reported the Times of India.

Prabhudesai is the HC’s first woman judge this year, and also the first Goan woman ever to be elevated to the Bombay HC. Bora was a registrar in the Supreme Court between 2010 and 2012, Badar was Principal district judge in Pune, Bhadang the registrar general of the Bombay high court and Jadhav a district judge too. Only Menon comes from the bar.

13 February 2014

The Bombay high court, hot on the heels of the Delhi high court that designated three new senior advocates, has named 11 advocates to become seniors, though none of them were women.

06 January 2014

Bombay HC new judges
The Bombay HC got five new additional judges today in lawyers Vinay Manohar Deshpande, Ajey Gadkari, Nitin Sambre, Girish Kulkarni and B S Colabawalla [PTI]

NGT not HC-enough for suo motu
The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has no power to take cognisance of cases on its own, said the Madras HC, restraining the NGT’s southern bench from suo motu cases [TOI]

Costly NLUD fees are fine, says HC 
Dismissing a student’s plea against NLU Delhi’s fee structure and compulsory residential university status which is otherwise not mandatory under BCI rules, the Delhi HC said comparing the university with any old engineering college will be like comparing apples with oranges [PTI]

Cash-at-judge’s-door
The SC has given the go ahead for initiating trial court proceedings against former Punjab & Haryana HC judge Nirmal Yadav for the cash-at-judge’s-door scam [Indian Express]

Chamber allotment struggles
The Rohini District Court Lawyers Allotment Committee allegedly arbitrarily denied allotment of a chamber to a disabled advocate despite him not only fitting all eligibility criteria but there also being a quota for the physically challenged in the court. The Committee has now assured the Delhi HC to give the advocate a fresh hearing [PTI]

Irresponsible executive criticism of #377
Chief justice of India P Sathasivam decried as irresponsible the statements of four union minister’s criticising the apex court’s judgment re-criminalising gay sex. “Except making our displeasure we can’t do anything. Though the statements are not appreciable we are not inclined to entertain the petition," he added while dismissing a social activist’s petition seeking disqualification for the four ministers on the ground that through their statements they “violated the secrecy of oath” [NDTV]

CBI to probe false allegations against judge
The CBI may soon probe the case of lobbyist TG Nandakumar who sent a letter to the Supreme Court Chief Justice and others falsely claiming that Madras HC judge C.K. Abdul Rahim had SIMI connections and close links with crime syndicate leader Dawood Ibrahim [Deccan Chronicle]

UK lawyers go on strike over legal aid cuts
In first-ever boycott of work, barristers (and solicitors) of England and Wales didn’t turn up to court for a half-day to protest a 30 per cent slash down in legal aid fees. “The legal aid dispute has become more polarised as the MoJ attempts to portray criminal lawyers as overpaid fat cats” -criminal lawyers disagree, reported The Guardian

Back to court-kindergarten
The Madras HC has launched a course titled “Redefining Legal Practices” for advocates with at least a 10 year PQE to teach them court craft, drafting and arguments [TOI]

Krishna Iyer J on JAC
Former Justice Krishna Iyer argues that the judicial appointments commission (JAC) must be totally independent and immune to legal proceedings in The Hindu

Kerala bar suspends colleague over sexism post
Before being suspended by the Calicut Bar Association, she wrote on her Facebook wall that male colleagues “address women as ‘sugar candy’ ‘dear’ and follow them with comments such as ‘you are so beautiful’ and the like. All of them follow the ‘Prem Nazir’ style of old Malayalam films. They dont seem to be familiar with newer films. It’s the same old way of making women either lovers or sisters; destroying them either by ‘caring’ for them or ‘keeping’ them. I pity all those who follow such a style.” [Kafila / India Today]

30 October 2013

Scores of Indian lawyers have made the transition from India to become English solicitors. However, Karishma Vora’s path to becoming a barrister in the UK from the Bombay high court is much rarer and more arduous, taking her three years. Legally India asked her how it’s done.

09 September 2013

Lording it: Bombay HC justice Anoop V Mohta has taken objection to being addressed as AV Mohta and warned advocates and litigants that their cases will not be accepted by his court if they do not address him by his full name in the praecipe [Notification]

NLSIU rape case: The six convicts guilty of the rape of an NLSIU Bangalore student in October have been sentenced to life term. The seventh accused is absconding while the eighth is a minor and his case is before the juvenile justice court. The Indian Express does a report on the life of the Delhi gangrape accused Juvenile in a correction home. Meanwhile the rape site – Bangalore university campus – still lacks adequate safety [TOI/IE/TOI]

Resigned to nepotism: Haryana Additional Advocate General Aditya Singh on Saturday resigned from his post to “maintain the majesticity of the institution of the judiciary”, after CNN-IBN on Friday reported him as the son of Justice Alok Singh of Uttarakhand High Court and son-in-law of Justice RK Garg of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, alongside 29 other law officers with their relatives in the judiciary [IBN Live]

SEBI foreign pacts: “For a greater oversight of hedge funds and other Alternative Investment Funds (AIFs) with cross-border presence, Sebi has reached regulatory cooperation and information exchange pacts with its counterparts in 31 European countries” reported the [Indian Express]

Bench politics: As Pune lawyers, who have been fighting for a Bombay HC bench in the city, prepare for a 16 September presentation explaining the demand, Maharashtra’s chief minister raised new concerns by showing support for a bench instead in Kolhapur [TOI]

21 June 2013

8 new Bom HC judges: The Bombay HC elevated eight lawyers to judgeship. The new judges: Advocates Suresh Gupte, Z A haq, K R Shriram, Gautam Patel, Atul Chandurkar, Revati Mohite Dhere, Mahesh Sonak and Ravindra Ghuge [TOI]

DoT V TRAI: Telecom regulator TRAI and the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) are in conflict again after TRAI decided not to waive roaming charges on mobile phones; however, the DoT had already announced they would be waived as part of the National Telecom Policy 2012 [Hindu BL]

Secret CJI inquiry: The home ministry has rejected RTI activist SC Aggarwal’s application seeking the finance ministry’s inquiry report against former Chief Justice of India KG Balakrishnan, and informed him that no ground was made out to make a presidential reference to the Supreme Court seeking Balakrishnan’s removal from his current post as the National Human Rights Commission’s (NHRC) chairperson [HT]

3 new Orissa HC judges: The Orissa HC got three new judges taking its total strength to 15 against the sanctioned strength of 22. The new judges are: Bidyut Ranjan Sarangi, Biswajit Mohanty and Akshaya Kumar Rath [TOI]

Suspended judge: A Bombay civil judge was suspended after the prosecution in a murder case he was earlier trying complained to the Supreme Court that the judge had threatened him with dire consequences and that there was danger to his life [Mumbai Mirror]

18 June 2013

Bombay, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh high and subordinate courts will in real time upload their case pendency statistics and case progress reports online, with litigants slated to have access to some of the data via phone text messages. The deadline for these three states’ courts to implement the upgrade was June 2013, and for all the other HCs it is December 2013, according to a Times of India report citing sources.

This data will be on the National Judicial Data Grid (DJDG) which is part of the eCourts project, and is also supposed to assist in formulating policy to reduce case delays. The implementing agency, the National Informatics Centre, has reportedly provisioned 100 “virtual machines” at its national data centre (NDC) in New Delhi to host the flood of real-time data. Data from 17 district courts has already been uploaded by the HCs with the data centre.

13 May 2013

Ineffective BCI: SC justices BS Chauhan and Dipak Mishra today said: “Bar Council has become ineffective. No action is taken against erring lawyers and we have to suffer. We are actually the victim and lawyers are making money… Lawyers think that they are above law. We are facing such situation every day.” [PTI]

Collegium conspiracies: 1,000 Punjab & Haryana High Court Bar Association members have signed a resolution opposing the elevation of seven lawyers to the bench, asking the Chief Justice of India to intervene in the “conspiracy of silence” [Express]

CCI market research: The Competition Commission of India has decided to have a dedicated Market Research Unit with the help of some external agency [Zee News]

3 new Bom HC judges: Member secretary of the Maharashtra State Legal Services Authority P N Deshmukh, secretary general of the Supreme Court A I S Cheema and Registrar General of the HC S B Shukre have been elevated as additional judges of Bombay high court [Express]

Imagine world without lit: Andhra Pradesh State Legal Services Authority (APSLSA) has identified 172 villages across the State as ‘litigation-free’ and the AP High Court will soon declare them as ‘litigation free areas’. Disputes will be settled only by Lok Adalats in these villages [Hindu]

American Hindu?: Janata Party President Subramanian Swamy has filed a plea in the Delhi High Court saying editors of news organisations in India “must be Indian citizens and residents of India” and not foreign citizens. He has attacked the US citizenship of editor of The Hindu Siddharth Varadarajan [Newslaundry]

27 November 2012

The magistrate who had ordered two women, who criticised Mumbai’s shut-down on Facebook after the death of Bal Thackeray last week, to be taken into judicial custody and later released on Rs 30,000 bail, has been transferred to Jalgaon in the far North of Maharashtra.

The Bombay High Court has ordered first class judicial magistrate Ramchandra Bagade to move immediately to Jalgaon from Palghar, which is in the Thane district near Mumbai, reported NDTV.

An inquiry into the incident has so far indicted the policemen involved in the action that was taken under the IPC and the IT Act and the Maharashtra home minister RR Patil may publicly comment on this later today [NDTV]

22 October 2012

Maharashtra government submits draft circular on guidelines to invoke charges of sedition under the IPC, to Bombay high court's chief justice's bench through advocate general Darius Khambata.

The circular specifying "limitations and parameters" for applying IPC's section 124 includes creating "disaffection towards the government" as a reason to press charges under the section. The circular follows the September 8 arrest of India Against Corruption cartoonist Aseem Trivedi on charges of sedition, that generated public outcry.

Part of the circular reads:

Comments expressing disapproval or criticism of the government with a view to obtaining change of government by lawful means are not seditious under section 124 (a) of IPC. Obscenity or vulgarity should also not be taken into account under this charge.

[DNA India]

11 October 2012

SC justices P Sathasivam and Ranjan Gogoi are currently examining whether life-term convicts should undergo simple or rigorous imprisonment.

A man convicted for murdering his wife, whom he suspected of adultery, was sentenced to the life-term by a Maharashtra sessions court and the sentence was reaffirmed by Bombay high court.

In his appeal through the Supreme Court Legal Services Centre, senior counsel Parmanand Katara argued on his behalf that since the Indian Penal Code (IPC) does not define rigorous imprisonment, the lifer should be subjected to only simple imprisonment entailing simple instead of hard labour during his life term.

The Maharashtra government has to file its reply in the matter [BS]

10 October 2012

Bombay high court judge S A Bobde will be sworn in as chief justice of Madhya Pradesh high court on Tuesday. Bobde was designated as a senior advocate in 1998, after 20 years of practice, and was appointed as additional judge in the Bombay high court in 2000.

He heard the Adarsh PIL until August when he recused himself from the matter without giving reasons [Express]

01 October 2012

A Mumbai law college student was caught recording court proceedings on his mobile phone in the Bombay high court and was served with a contempt notice. The student had recorded his brother – an advocate arguing a property dispute opposite senior advocate Venkatesh Dhond and in the court of justice Kathawala.

He had recorded for 18 minutes before his phone was confiscated by a court-officer. Following the incident, only advocates will be allowed to carry phones inside courtrooms. Previously everyone was allowed to carry phones inside, but a Rs 500 fine could be administered on anyone caught using the phones inside courtrooms.

In January the Bombay HC confiscated the phone of a holidaying Illinois circuit court judge who was caught taking pictures of court proceedings [Mid-Day]

19 September 2012

Bombay HC Eight male advocates have been designated as senior counsel in the Bombay high court, with six being based in Mumbai, one in Aurangabad and one in Nagpur.